Quote from: Piestrio;602900Cool maps.

I'm thinking some sort of "gamer advent" for myself.

Maybe we could start a thread for people to contribute little bits and bobs useful for gaming throughout December. Encounters, maps, NPCs, etc... Just little spits of creativity to keep things flowing.

Hrm...

That'd be cool!

What'd be really awesome is if we could get a different gaming company or interest to offering something every day for a day between now and Christmas. Maybe it's a minor title for a buck, or a special sale on something...

Hmmm...that's a bit off topic.

Also, keep up the amazing work, Andrew. 'Mites and 'Tites? Love it.

An attempt to break out of the tyranny of the grid.

Dig the organic looking latter one. Kinda crazy, but a good "OMG, I totally wanna know WTF that's all about!" crazy.

Interestingly enough, the close clustering of squared rooms and lack of long, perfectly tunneled (now with extra right angle turns!), gives it a more lived in appearance. Digging through rock is hard, organisms are lazy, thus this organic layout feels more 'natural'.

Your previous one of the new two does suffer from the dreaded routine. What also stands out are "long, perfect, filled-w/-right-angles!' tunnels. Unless it's a 'fat man's misery' or other preventative trap from intruders, it's... odd (and so overdone nowadays as to be trite). Hallways are admittedly hard to add detail though, and graphs just beg you to pay attention to its grid.

I will say though that this previous one has quite awesome room names. "Canoptic Whorehouse," "God Tears," "Moth Hell," "God's Backgammon," & "Smothering Tapestries"? Great stuff, a hook in two words! Perhaps cluster the awesome within their own regions -- spaced with thematic banal between -- so it doesn't seem so "2 much randum kool for no raezon!" Good stuff, but sometimes I need to catch my breath.

"God's Backgammon" sounds tremendous.

That first one was drawn before your post pointing out the "formula" some of them had fallen into.

Can you elaborate on this:

Quote from: Opaopajr-perpetually top-down perspective

?

When I'm drawing a dungeon layout, I can't get away from thinking about how they will affect of the game, and I wonder if that's a hindrance sometimes.  This is why I often avoid the types of areas I think would be fascinating to explore-cave systems, very badly ruined complexes, mazes made of living digestive tract etc.  

A 40 x 30 room with a door in the N and W walls is described and mapped in seconds.  A roughly L shaped cavern with 3' openings 20' off the floor at the junction formed by the walls running E-W and N-S can be difficult to explain, or even worse, you think it's been explained perfectly, then you see the players clusterfuck map 45 minutes later when they are planning their escape and inwardly weep.

I've heard the idea of drawing the room shape on a dry wipe grid and then erasing it when they leave, probably the best solution.

I think it has to do with assuming immediate cartographic utility in the form of a blueprint floor plan.

But people didn't always think that way. Not only are there vertical cutaways, there's isometric perspective, there's symbolic regional referencing, etc. Humans are surprisingly flexible in their mapping.

Benoist's How to Megadungeon topic shows a side view dungeon dealing with all the levels and their inter-level interconnections. Intra-level detail is provided by a top-down perspective addressing a singular level's elevation.

Japanese Heian period art has palaces in a pseudo-isometric viewpoint with the roofs blown off.

Vornheim structures the house of medusa with a vertical slice of the home populated with visual icons and 1st person scene-snapshots throughout appropriate levels and regions.

Sounds dangerously post-modern, I guess. But really it's just opening up the art from the graph paper grid.

Here's a thought. Get a radial graph, instead of these cartesian graphs, and let's see where your subconscious takes you. With no right angles everywhere, you might find yourself with less right angles?

Thanks for all the comments so far.  I don't see anything overtly post modern about drop-in illustrations, I'll give it a go.  I'm not sure how it'll eat into the 45min time limit I set though.

No update tonight though, gaming instead.

Quote from: AndrewSFTSN;604071No update tonight though, gaming instead.

I think it's downright selfish of you to put your own gaming ahead of the pathetic needs of those following this thread . . .

I think the "blueprint" method is the most used because it works best, generally speaking.

RPGPundit

Side elevations feel super limiting for this kind of thing to me.

Quote from: RPGPundit;604326I think the "blueprint" method is the most used because it works best, generally speaking.

RPGPundit

It is also relatively easy for those of us who dont have great mapping talents. I do occassionally experiment with more 3D maps to get a feel for a location, but the top down blue-print view is so much faster and effective for me. My maps are pretty shoddy, but they seem to get the job done for the most part.

For me, what I really need is enough on paper so i cankeep track of locations in game, notes so I know what kind of things are in the area, an encouter chart and some general background info.

To the OP: this is a cool idea and the maps look nice so far. Since you are basically just trying to crank out maps to get past some patterns and habits, I would say try to work through those habits within your standard format (which seems to be top down blue print). I have found changing approaches doesn't get rid of the underlying bad habits in most cases. If you have a bad habit, it will likely show up in 2D and 3D maps. I am not saying method doesn't matter. I would just see if you can fix whatever the problem is in blueprint first.

Some gridless excursions.